Swine Flu, or the newly named H1N1 has been sweeping across the nation.  Schools are closing, churches have stopped shaking hands and the nightly news updates us to how many cases have been uncovered locally. Even Google has indexed more than 233,686,324 pages of information about this strain of influenza.  Rejoice there is a way to stay on ahead of the evening news and Google by loading that information on your iPod, iTouch and iPhone.  iTunes is loaded with information from sources such as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), as well as through iTunes U. 

There is even a new application that has been proposed to Apple called the "Swine Flu Tracker" by IntuAps.  This new applications is awaiting final approval but would create a real time collection of data from the CDC, Google Maps, Wikipedia and others sources before displaying the information to the iPhone.  Swine Flu Tracker will pin point where the cases of infection are via Google Maps as well as provide detailed information on symptoms and the assigned threat level by the CDC.  Once / If the application has been approved it will be added to the list of free applications. Right now there is no known publish date on this application and some even think of it as a pure form of viral marketing rather than feasible tool.

According to the CDC in the 2007 - 2008 Flue Season about 5 - 20% of the American population caught a strain of the flu, 200,000 of them were hospitalize and 36,000 Americans that died.  Currently there are no known deaths directly caused by the Swine Flu so it will have some catching up to do if it is to compete against the "common flu" that we combat annually.  The one big difference boils down to vaccinations.  The Swine flu or H1N1 has no specific vaccination while the common flu vaccinations that Americans get annually are a mixture of the years tops strains. 

Helpful Links for information on the Swine Flu.

WebMD
CDC - Center for Disease Control
wikipedia